President of Chaff & Co.

Linda Chaff

Linda Chaff is President of Chaff & Co. Her career combines elements of organizational development, which includes five years in the FBI’s LA Field Office Laboratory, ten years’ experience as director of protection services for a medical facility, three years’ in Europe as event planner and concierge. These positions helped her build on her interest in business development. Linda has served as the Disaster Action Team Director for the American Red Cross in Monongalia County, West Virginia, where she developed a comprehensive disaster action team training program and trained volunteers to work at disaster sites. She also served on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) national committee for healthcare emergency preparedness.

Credits include the Russell L. Colling Literary Award and appointments on committee and board positions with safety and civic councils, including the executive committee of National Safety Council’s Health Care Section. Linda has worked with the American Hospital Association, ASHE, and ASHRM on a number of successful projects. She participated in AHA’s video conference, Confronting the Risk: Hazardous Materials and Hospital Liability. In the early 1990s, she served as the technical writer on ASHE’s executive report on emerging trends in healthcare and project editor of ASHE’s Effective Health Care Facilities Management. Upon moving to Chattanooga from Chicago in 1991, she chaired ASHRM’s regional chapter and initiated and carried out a marketing campaign that increased positioning, membership, and meeting participation five fold.

Linda grew up on a farm in Washington state. Before there was an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), her father experienced a debilitating injury, losing two fingers on his left hand while operating an unguarded saw to cut heavy logs. This experience, and the stories about her grandparents who suffered disabling workplace injuries, set her on a similar journey as Bernardino Ramazzini, MD, and Alice Hamilton to try to ensure that everybody’s husband, father, grandfather, wife, mother, and child can be in a workplace that is healthy and safe.